Monthly Archives: September 2013

Hard work is starting to pay off! Can’t wait for my next race. Never thought I would get such a kick from seeing the mins falling off my 10K time. Only a matter of a few more races to get to that sub-60min 10K.

The race itself was tougher than expected. I would normally start off slow and then try to increase my speed as the race progress. My problem is I don’t always know how slow and in the end I never have the energy to increase my pace. I read the notes my coach wrote for me on how to approach the race and I think that was the key to me running a faster 10K time. He wrote “run the first half moderate to hard” and then run as hard as you can in the 2nd half.

I must admit, this was the first time I entered a race to ‘race’ it. I have never gone into a race to see how far I can push myself. Traffic was slow to the venue and we arrived just before the start of the race, so I was not able to warm-up properly. I was a bit flustered during the first 2 km put kept pushing. I knew I was not ready to run sub 60mins at this race, but I wanted to improve on my 68mins. I would have been happy with just 1 min off :-). I ran the first 5k, moderate to hard! It was tough and I really had to focus. Luckily NO HILLS, but such a deceptively little incline that made you work hard all the work all the way.

Going into the 2nd half I really had to focus. At 7km I was ready to walk! I knew if I was gonna walk I can kiss that PB goodbye. I decided to put my watch on intervals to minimise the amount of walking (damage control) :-). In training I am quite strong on the repeats even when tired. All psychological…knowing that the hard run part is only for a short period 🙂 but it did the trick for me on the day. At km 10 I wanted to run all out, but it just felt like the longest km ever. I ended up walking a few times in that last km, still don’t understand why I do that! The last 500m just felt like it was never gonna end but by that time I was so excited cos I knew I was going to have a new 10K PB I just needed to keep moving! Very, very happy with my 64mins!

Thought of the day:Hard work and discipline is what you need to succeed. This applies to everything. There really is no secret-or-shortcut that will get you around this.